LAND & WATER 
August 2, 1917 
of that crisis in munitionmcnt and supply which destroyed 
the power of the Roumanian army. It opened with a success- 
ful tactical move by the Germans north of the Red 
Tower Pass, which broke and forced beyond the frontier 
the Roiuiranian division holding it. 
At the end of the third week in October Mackensen in the 
Dobrudja at last approached, and by a decisive victory 
captured immediately afterwards the railway line from the 
great bridge of the Danube to Constanza, and the bridge and 
the town itself. He advanced very rapidly to the north, and 
at the beginning of November had occupied virtually the 
whole of the Dobrudja, but he was not yet able to cross the 
Danube and the mass of Roumania proper was intact. This 
situation continued until the tliird week in November, when 
we first knew by a despatch from Berlin issued upon Satur- 
day the i8thof that month, and dealing with the fighting of 
the day before, Friday, that the Carpathian line had at last 
been forced and that the southernmost pass, the Vulcan, 
has been completely mastered by the Austro-German army. 
In the south there was an exactly simultaneous Allied 
success. After heavy fighting in the "bend of the Cerna, the 
brunt of which fell upon the Serbian infantry and the 
French artillery, the lines in front of Monastir, known as 
the ■' hnes of Kenali " were turned, and upon that same 
Friday, November 19th, Lieutenant Murat, the first 
Frencli soldier, rode into Monastir. It was and it remains 
a considerable asset of a political sort in the hands of the 
Allies that this town, the prime object of the Bulgarian 
entry into the war, should have been taken. But no advance 
further proved possible. The mountain mass of the Balkans 
was an insuperable wall, and the pressure on the south was 
pot sufficient to save Bukharest from the combined advance 
of the Turkish, Bulgarian, Austrian and German forces. 
The rapid Roumanian retreat over the plain of Wallachia 
threatened the capital more and more. Bukharest fell on 
December 6th, after a battle which at one moment seemed to 
have halted the invasion. The Danube was crossed as well 
■at many points and that invasion proceeded until it reached 
the lines of the Sereth and was there halted. 
Just after the open fighting season of 1916 had closed, 
-the local actions in front of Verdun betrayed the new 
character of the Allied superiority upon the West and gave 
promise at the same time [of what might become a new 
tactical method. In each a very intense but short bombard- 
ment was followed by a carefully rehearsed movement with 
hmited objectives. 
The first, in October, recovered the observation posts of 
the ridge, including the ruins of Douaumont Fort. The 
second carried the observation posts to the north and west 
of these, including that of Pepper Hill and the heights con- 
necting it with the Douaumont Heights. In each the number 
of prisoners taken alone was greater than the numbers of 
French casualties, and each became the model for the fighting 
of 1917. General Nivelle was in command of this sector at 
the time, and it was in some nieasure the striking success of 
these local actions which led to his appointment as Commander- 
in-Chief of the French armies in the following year, 
Italian Pressure 
On the Italian front the position during the third year — 
considering the war as a whole — was the successful holding 
of a number of Austrian divisions fluctuating between 25 
and 35, and the successful maintenance of pressure unin- 
terrupted from the Italian side against the enemy : pressuie 
which gave proof of its character in the power to eftect an 
occasional advance and to prevent any effective counter- 
action. Thus Gorizia fell into Italian hands at the very 
beginning of the third year, while later in the fighting season 
of 1917, an offensive on a considerable scale was to reach the 
crest of the Carso and the greater part of the ridge positions 
beyond the Upper Isonzo, though failing to carry the Hermada 
Hill on the Adriatic Coast, which is the principal position 
covering Trieste, and failing also to carry the culminating 
height of the Isonzo Ridge. 
We must never forget the true character of the Italian 
front and its function in the Great War. It is not a front 
lending itself to an offensive nor one which would ever 
properly see the breaking of the siege line, but it is one which, 
so long as the organisation of the Eastern front by the AlHcs 
could be maintained, had the great value of crippling quite 
half of the Austrian forces. Meanwhile, the large Italian 
margin of man-power made it possible to lend troops for the 
extension of the line across the Balkan Peninsula. 
At this moment, the opening of December 1916, a general 
review of the situation convinced e%-ery observer that in spite 
of the very real success in Roumania and the justified boast 
that the line had not been broken upon the Somme, the next 
year menaced the enemy with disaster. The British army was 
growing steadily over and above its replacement of temporary 
and permanent losses in the great battles ; the French losses 
had been proportionately diminished in intensity by the in- 
crease of its Ally ; most important of all, the power of 
munitionment which Great Britain had now developed and 
which was the key to all the future of the campaign, was 
rising upon a rapid curve which the enemy could not follow. 
Great slave raids, the utmost organisation of his resources, 
the occupation of French coal and iron fields, of Belgian and 
Polish machinery, were not sufficient to bridge the distance 
between his rate of effort and our own. 
First EflFort for Peace 
Upon December 12th the German Government solemnly 
asked for peace. It was the first time it had openly admitted 
its peril. Many an effort had been made from the very first days 
of the Marne onwards to detach one Ally from the rest, but 
no general appeal had yet been attempted. It failed, and there 
immediately followed in the latter part of December and 
the January, 1916-7, those new dispositions which were due to 
a feeling of desperation. The igi8 class was called up ; a 
great number of new divisions were formed ; and most 
important of all, the German Government declared its 
determination to remove all remaining civilised restrictions 
from its use of the submarine. The German decision to use 
the submarine in this fashion may properly be compared to 
the declaration of the Terror during the French Revolution. 
It was the most extreme act of which the nation at war was 
capable, and it was a novel effect in the story of European 
warfare. The 'smaller neutrals whose ships were sunk and 
whose crews and passengers massacred with the same in- 
difference as the enemy would extend to a Frenchman, an 
Englishman, or Italian would, it was calculated, fail to take 
any action in defence of their ancient and most essential 
rights. The risk was of a rupture with America. This risk 
the enemy was prepared to run upon two calculations, the one 
right, the other wrong. 
He calculated rightly that his chances in 1917 were already 
so bad that he might risk their increase on the chance of 
really weakening the tonnage of the worid. While his false 
calculation was that the variety of American opinion, the 
large body of American citizens German in origin, and many 
other factors, would, between them, keep America out of the 
war. Meanwhile, the enemy began witli the evacuation of 
Grandcourt in the second week of February, his preparations 
for abandoning the salient of Noyon, and by so much shorten- 
ing his line in the West. 
That retreat, hastened by British pressure on the Bapaume 
Ridge, was over by the third week in March. 
Capture of Bagdad 
Meanwhile, there had taken place in Mesopotamia, a very 
considerable military event which, though subsidiary to the 
greater fields of war, was of the highest possible political 
importance to the British position in the East, and a severe 
blow to our Turkish opponent. Bagdad had been entered 
by the morning of Sunday, March nth, by the British 
troops. After a prolonged preparation, the aim of which 
was to secure ample communication from the base upon 
the sea, the Turkish lines at Sanna-i-yat covering Kut on 
the north of the Tigris, were turned by an action fought 
above Kut from the south of the river upon February 
15th, at the close of a further preparatory action which 
had stretched over neariy a week. Upon that day the 
whole of the south bank of the Tigris above Kut was 
reached. A further action upon Friday, the 23rd, secured 
the crossing of the river, the enemy was compelled to retreat 
precipitately toward the forces he had left behind to the north 
and on the 24th of the month, Saturday, Kut was entered' 
What followed was among the most remarkable feats in the 
history of war. A space of 100 miles with no good road 
and no railway, supported only by an exceedingly winding 
and treacherous river with a very rapid current and un- 
known shoals spread throughout it, was covered by a large 
British force in weather already becoming too hot for the 
health of Europeans, and we owe to the engineers, more than 
to any other branch of the ser\'ice, the surprising success that 
foUowed. Ten days only divided the first advance on Bagdad 
and the concentration in front of the town. It was con- 
sidering the circumstances, by far the most rapid effort in 
the history of the war, and proved at its conclusion also the 
most successful. On March 7th, the three Turkish divisions 
resisting the advance held the line of the Diala river pro- 
longed westward in front of Bagdad. On the 8th and gth 
this line was turned by a crossing of the Tigris and an attack 
along Its eastern or right bank. The enemy abandoned 
the line of the Diala, though this was not crossed without 
